Academic Award

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 20, 2009
Dr. Andrea B. Hellman
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Dr. Andrea Hellman

JOPLIN, MO (SNS) - Andrea B. Hellman, Ed.D., Assistant Professor TESOL-Project SPEAK in the Department of Teacher Education at Missouri Southern State University, has received a major academic honor.

Dr. Hellman has been notified by the Editor and Board of Language Teaching: Surveys and Studies that her doctoral thesis, titled "The Limits of Eventual Lexical Attainment in Adult-onset Second Language Acquisition," has been selected as the winner of the Christopher Brumfit PhD/Ed.D. Thesis Award 2008, sponsored by Cambridge University Press and promoted by Language Teaching.

TESOL stands for "Teaching English as a Second Language." Project SPEAK, (Speaking Proficiently Enables All Kids) is a grant-funded program offered through the TESOL program at Missouri Southern.

Dr. Hellman was notified in the spring that her thesis was one of fourteen chosen for the final stage of selection out of almost fifty submissions. Of those fourteen, Hellman's thesis was selected to win the award.

Dr. Hellman received her doctorate from Boston University. Dr. Hellman completed her dissertation at the Boston University School of Education, under the supervision of Dr. Shanley Allen and Dr. Mary Catherine O'Connor, Dr. Marnie Reed and Dr. John Read.

The Christopher Brumfit Award is designed to recognize doctoral thesis research that makes a significant and original contribution to the field of Second Language Acquisition and/or Foreign Language teaching and learning. The evaluation criteria include the following: 1) scholarly or professional significance to the field of second or foreign language, 2) originality and creativity, and 3) quality of presentation.

 

The external referees remarked that Dr. Hellman's study makes an "original and valuable contribution to an area of research of considerable theoretical and practical interest. Most of the . . . research on this issue has investigated grammatical on phonological competence, so Hellman's study is noteworthy in being one of only a few that focus on lexical attainment."

 

It was further observed that her study "is well theoretically-informed and well designed, with a careful and insightful analysis, making use of statistical tools in a sophisticated way to support it."

 

 

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